2013-02-05

...but I try to take care around my boat work, partly because I don't want to learn the hard way and have to do things six times, and partly because I'm always conscious that I did not receive training in my youth that would help me in any respect in my current full-bore, hands-on operations. Humilty and paranoia are my boat repair and rehab tutors.

So yesterday, my knowlegeable friend (and an award-winning cinematographer) Capt. Matt and I had just retreated from both the cold and from hauling out a very balky prop shaft.

Apparently, the secret to motivating a dirty old shaft is "more lube". It was ever thus, or rather, thrust.

This is part of the whole "tie down the engine to the boat and the new prop to the engine" exercise, more about which will follow in a later, action-filled post. Or maybe two. It's a big topic.

And we see this through his car windscreen:

This leaning tower of cinder blocks seems sub-par to me

Now, I'm no expert in how to overwinter on the hard with vintage runabouts, and I don't know if it's just a maturing sense of competence or a
basic feel for physics that made this seem a little dodgy in both
conception and execution.

The hardest working square inch of pine wood ashore. Picture the fate of the comically small fenders versus the five-ton crane.

Perhaps this is standard operating procedure for the owner. Perhaps my urge to back away on tiptoe so as not to create disrupting vibrations is related to the aforementioned refitter's paranoia. But that is one of the sketchiest things I've ever seen in a boat yard, and I've seen drunks urinating off bows in snowsqualls, boats casually dropped off cranes and trailers, and numerous drug deals.

Maybe some runabout owner will write to reassure me I'm completely off-base (like this boat very nearly is), or that it is Perfectly Safe. I wouldn't mind if the blocks were doubled up and rotated 90 degrees with each row; there's nothing inherently bad about that practice. This practice, however...

Regarding your prop and your plan to sail from Toronto to the Maritimes, I'd like to add:

I went to Quebec City last year in March to take a look at a boat, a possible replacement for my old boat. All the boats were on the hard, it was that time of year.

Every single one of them had a line cutter ahead of their prop. The most popular was a very sharp bronze disk. Local sailors mentioned that it's indispensable because of the amount of rope debris floating around the St Lawrence.

They disliked the idea of diving the waters to free the prop, the River is not the Caribbean, they said.

Yes, I am, John, and you'll see provisions made to install a line cutter in the very next post. Despite the (to my mind) outrageous cost, and despite my belief that the extensive deadwood and the essentially "closed" aperature in which my prop sits, it is cheap insurance compared to hiring a diver or, God forbid, having to go in myself in frosty waters, perhaps approaching a lee shore in a strong tidal current, to trying to slice off something I can't see because my eyeballs are shivering...

The online log of S/V Alchemy, her restoration, her crew and their voyage

“You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world.”-Thomas Traherne

"He that has patience may compass anything."-François Rabelais

"The Great Lakes sailor is wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. "-Herman Melville

"[The sea is] neither cruel nor kind ... Any apparent virtues it may have, and all its vices, are seen only in relation to the spirit of man who pits himself, in ships of his own building, against its insensate power."-Denys Rayner

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” -Charles Bukowski

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." -Yoko Ono

My wife, my high-school-aged son and I plan to start voyaging in 2018 for an estimated five to six years. I hope to move us aboard before that point to work out the kinks of living on a boat.

The careful reader will note the URL of this blog has "alchemy 2009" in it, a reference not only to our boat's name, but also to the original, anticipated departure date.

This is called "tempting the gods of the sea and life in general" and will not be modified. You have to know when to fight, and when to appease. Frankly, it matters that we go, not when we go. This is a good lesson for all aspiring voyagers, I think: the hubris of long-range planning lurks like an evil watermark on every "to-do" list.

Here you will find various notes on our preparations, labours and education as we try to become better sailors in a good old boat. I hope to continue to discuss in this blog the realities of preparing for a marine-focused extended sabbatical, the issues both mundane and philosophical confronting the potential cruiser, and the efforts required by everyone involved to make it happen.

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Possibly fictional bio

Middle-aged, bookish Canadian with compact family in process of exploding career and prospects in favour of lengthy, low-rent sabbatical has boat, seeks ocean. Must have non-smoking bilges.
All contents (C) 2007-2017 M. Dacey/Dark Star Productions